Word: darlan
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1940-1949
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...invasion of French North Africa. The U.S. also heard the much fuller account of how last fortnight the A.E.F., building on that groundwork, had swept to a quick, clean victory. Within four days of the first landing, all official French resistance had ceased on orders of Admiral Jean Francois Darlan, chief of Vichy's armed forces. Algiers, Oran, Rabat, Casablanca and the rest were in American hands. So was Admiral Darlan...
Shifty Admiral Jean Francois Darlan, ex-collaborating Premier, heir-designate of Marshal Pétain and Commander in Chief of all French sea, land and air forces, had come to Algiers some time before the invasion, ostensibly to visit his sick son. In the Allied attack, the first step toward his country's liberation under Allied colors, Darlan the opportunist saw the great chance of his career...
...Darlan was the man who pulled the strings in Africa. At his command the Vichy armies would fight or lay down their arms. In that fact lay power such as he had never held. Darlan did not hesitate to make...
Winds in Vichy. Darlan and his acts did not appear to be accepted by the Vichy Government. Marshal Pétain, under sudden and critical pressure, changed his course like a weathervane, finally succumbed in impotence when German armies, at Hitler's command, swept through Unoccupied France in a 24-hour dash to the Mediterranean.* From Vichy's radio, now fully under German control, came repeated repudiations of everything Darlan did and the injunction to Frenchmen to obey only Pétain's orders...
...appointed Delegate General of North Africa in January 1941, he carried with him orders from Pétain to defend the empire against aggression as he saw fit, and to ignore contrary orders which-if an attack took place-might be forced out of Vichy under German pressure. Darlan might well have carried similar instructions, which would get him obedience from local authorities. Darlan got such obedience: the men of Vichy rallied at once to his call, placed themselves under his command. This was what the Allied forces needed...